Pentagon Checking Computers

February 10, 2000

The Defense Department said Thursday that all of its computers with Internet access will be checked to verify that they were not used as unwitting agents in the massive attacks this week on Internet electronic commerce sites. No major new attacks were immediately apparent Thursday. Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman, said there is no evidence to suggest that Pentagon computers were involved in the attacks, but the hard drives of the more than 1 million computers with Internet access will be checked anyway. The hacker technique -- called a "denial of service attack" -- involves directing a flood of messages to computers that run Web sites. Some security experts noted that the attacks coincided with a three-day meeting of Internet service providers in San Jose, Calif., that ended Tuesday. The keynote speech at the meeting focused on denial of service attacks.